Political and legal tools have emerged since the Seventies, and especially in the last two decades, that provide political and legal power to neighborhoods. However, these tools are often used in an ad hoc fashion and there has been scant analysis of how these tools might work together effectively. This article seeks to explore this trend, and further argues that cities consciously overlay these neighborhood legal tools. This approach is referred to in the article as a de facto “legal neighborhood.” This approach does not call for secession of neighborhoods from cities or for the wholesale privatization of public functions, as have others that argue for neighborhood empowerment. Rather, the article asserts that the collective operation of these neighborhood tools is greater than the sum of their parts, providing a method for civic engagement at a level city-wide politicians feel comfortable serving and in which residents feel comfortable participating. The article also provides approaches for linking the neighborhood to city and regional affairs, and a history and theory of the concept of the neighborhood as an argument for the important role and function of neighborhoods in American life.